Human Action

Human action originates change. As far as there is human action there is no stability, but ceaseless alteration. The historical process is a sequence of changes. It is beyond the power of man to stop it and to bring about an age of stability in which all history comes to a standstill. It is man's nature to strive after improvement, to beget new ideas, and to rearrange the conditions of his life according to these ideas.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 12, Section 4, The Sphere of Economic Calculation: Stabilization, 1949

Economics and Reality

Economics deals with real man, weak and subject to error as he is, not with ideal beings, omniscient and perfect as only gods could be.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 4, Section 3, The Scale of Needs, 1949

Democratic Majoritarianism

Whatever the system of government may be, the foundation upon which it is built and rests is always the opinion of those ruled that to obey and to be loyal to this government better serves their own interests than insurrection and the establishment of another regime. The majority has the power to do away with an unpopular government and uses this power whenever it becomes convinced that its own welfare requires it.  In the long run there is no such thing as an unpopular government.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 2, A Critique of the Holistic and Metaphysical View of Society, 1949

On Human Foreknowledge

Whatever the system of government may be, the foundation upon which it is built and rests is always the opinion of those ruled that to obey and to be loyal to this government better serves their own interests than insurrection and the establishment of another regime. The majority has the power to do away with an unpopular government and uses this power whenever it becomes convinced that its own welfare requires it.  In the long run there is no such thing as an unpopular government

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 6, Section 1, Uncertainty and Acting, 1949

Traditionalism

For the core of traditionalism is not real historical facts, but an opinion about them, however mistaken, and a will to believe things to which the authority of ancient origin is attributed.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 9, Section 3, The Role of Ideas: Might, 1949

On False Dogma

Hence, people concluded, the gain of one man is the damage of another; no man profits but by the loss of others. 

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 24, Section 1, Harmony and Conflict of Interests: The Ultimate Source of Profit and Loss on the Market, 1949

On Utopia

After the philosophers had abandoned the search for the absolute, the utopians took it up. They weave dreams about the perfect state. They do not realize that the state, the social apparatus of compulsion and coercion, is an institution to cope with human imperfection and that its essential function is to inflict punishment upon minorities in order to protect majorities against the detrimental consequences of certain actions. With "perfect" men there would not be any need for compulsion and coercion. But utopians do not pay heed to human nature and the inalterable conditions of human life.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 2, Section 11, The Limitations on Praxeological Concepts, 1949

Duty

What I did was merely my duty.  Disobeying the laws of the time was just the normal thing to do.

Source: Andree Geulen-Herscovici
Taken From:  Restoring the Republic with Truth and Fearlessness, Karen Kwiatkowski, June 6th 2001


About the Source, taken from the above article:Andree Geulen-Herscovici, an 86-year-old Belgian schoolteacher was recognized by Israel for saving 300 children from the Nazis. In 1942, she witnessed a Gestapo raid on the school. She then joined an underground rescue organization, and for more than two years, she quietly worked with other likeminded people to save these Jewish children from an evil state that would have seen their lives destroyed.
During the ceremony, she said the above.

On Value

Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things. It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 4, Section 2, The Scale of Value, 1949

On the Instinct of Aggression and Destruction

One must not tell the masses: Indulge in your urge for murder; it is genuinely human and best serves your well-being. One must tell them: If you satisfy your thirst for blood, you must forego many other desires. You want to eat, to drink, to live in fine homes, to clothe yourselves, and a thousand other things which only society can provide. You cannot have everything, you must choose. The dangerous life and the frenzy of sadism may please you, but they are incompatible with the security and plenty which you do not want to miss either.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 8, Human Society: The Instinct of Aggression and Destruction, 1949

Society

Society, ... always involves men acting in cooperation with other men in order to let all participants attain their own ends.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 7, Human Society: The Great Society, 1949

On Society

Society is joint action and cooperation in which each participant sees the other partner's success as a means for the attainment of his own.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 7, Human Society: The Great Society, 1949

On the Origins of Social Cooperation

Neither love not charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 8, Section 6, Human Society: The Individual Within Society, 1949

Economic History

It is impossible to understand the history of economic thought if one does not pay attention to the fact that economics as such is a challenge to the conceit of those in power. An economist can never be a favorite of autocrats and demagogues. With them he is always the mischief-maker, and the more they are inwardly convinced that his objections are well founded, the more they hate him.

Source: Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action, Chapter 2, The Procedure of Economics, 1949

Sentimental Humanitarianism

Is not man the first thing to be considered? it will be asked.  Is he not to be given preference over abstract rights, privileges, and so forth?  What this question fails to see is that man's egotism renders impossible that kind of organization which would allow him to prosper to a degree.  When he puts himself first in this sense, the victory is Pyrrhic.  The only way to give him anything that will last is to place him in a structure where opportunity and ability may meet.  This cannot be done by considering egotistic demands first; such shortsightedness destroys the supporting structure.  Thus sentimental humanitarianism, ignorant of fundamental realities but ever attentive to desires, wrecks society.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

Equality

When the rule of equality [reigns] ... no one knows where he belongs.  Because he has been assured that he is "just as good as anybody else," he is likely to suspect that he is getting less than his deserts.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

Traditional Values

The state, ceasing to express man's inner qualifications, turns into a vast bureaucracy designed to promote economic activity.  It is little wonder that traditional values, however much they may be eulogized on commemorative occasions, today must dodge about and find themselves nooks and crannies if they are to survive at all.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

On Education

But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and the passions will take precedence over all else.  The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority.  Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948

On Working for the Lord and for Others

Much of the effort of modern politicians is devoted to convincing us that men serve best when they are serving one another.  But the one consideration which would make this true is left out; service to others is the best service when the effort of all is subsumed under a transcendental conception.  Material gratification does not provide this, and here one has the reason why a secularized state finally breeds an intense hatred of politicians, who are trying to get men to accept one another as taskmasters.  Work is not to be performed "as ever in my great Taskmaster's eye," but for my neighbor, whom I despise.

Source: Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences 1948 

Political Finance

The real truth ... is, as you know and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since he days of Andrew Jackson - and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W.W. [Woodrow Wilson]

Source: Franklin Roosevelt in a letter to one of Woodrow Wilson's top advisors
Taken From: Superclass, David Rothkpf, 2008, pg 152